


It's (not) my Party I (won't) Cry if I Want to

by Boomchick



Series: Tumblr Prompts [10]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Ain't no party like an avalanche party cuz an avalanche party don't stop, But also, Jealousy, M/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24562840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boomchick/pseuds/Boomchick
Summary: Oneshot Tumblr prompt fillSephiroth comes along with Cloud to an Avalanche reunion, and finds himself sitting alone, wanting desperately to be selfish.
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: Tumblr Prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774831
Comments: 4
Kudos: 93





	It's (not) my Party I (won't) Cry if I Want to

**Author's Note:**

> One of a series of prompts written on Tumblr for those who are supporting the BLM movement. This one was requested by lindsmorr.tumblr.com
> 
> If you've donated, protested, or otherwise supported black lives, you can come and make a request too! https://boomchickfanfiction.tumblr.com/

“Sephiroth.”

“Yes, Cloud?”

“Your hair is doing that thing again.”

Sephiroth glanced over. Saw his silver hair twining around Cloud’s wrist and arm. Trying to grab him. To hold him. He cleared his throat, sliding his hands back through the mass of his hair and pulling it over the shoulder away from Cloud.

“There a problem?” Cloud asked, glancing up at him.

“Not at all.” Sephiroth replied, taking a drink of his whiskey. “Go on. Fraternize with the enemy.”

“You realize that if they’re the enemy I am too, right?” Cloud asked with a chuckle, but he patted Sephiroth on the shoulder and wandered over towards the dart board, prompting groans from Tifa and Yuffie, who had been enjoying standing a chance in the game while they were teaming up against Cid.

Sephiroth drained his glass, watching Cloud chuckle at them, taking the darts from the exasperated pilot, who had clearly had enough of Yuffie trying to throw off his aim with carefully timed shrieking and insults.

He looked so at ease with them. Tifa’s hand slapped his back companionably, and Cloud actually barked out a laugh as he stumbled into Cid. Cid straightened him up, patting his shoulders and trying to amp him up for the darts game. Yuffie snuck closer, clearly hoping to startle him into flubbing it.

Each of their touches on him was like a tiny, tiny wound. He drummed his fingers on his empty glass, watching Ci'ds rough hands on Cloud’s shoulders. Watching Cloud shove Yuffie away playfully. Watching Tifa clap and high-five him even though they were on opposite teams.

Mine, something within him was whining. He’s mine, though.

Sephiroth didn’t notice his hand tightening on the glass until it fractured. A single crack splitting it almost in half. Lucky, he thought, carefully setting it down, watching the ice cube settle, that he hadn’t shattered it more loudly. That would have been a problem.

“Hmm…” said a high, sweet, deeply unsettling voice beside him. He felt goosebumps raise all over his body. Even after all these years, she was just so…

“Having a hard night?” Aerith asked, leaning around so she could get a better look at his face.

Creepy, Sephiroth completed his thought, glancing away rather than meeting her warm green eyes. They were the exact opposite of his, although she was probably the closest any of Avalanche came to being like him. They shared Cetra heritage. But her’s was right, and his was sick, and one day…

One day Cloud would figure that out and…

“Vincent!” Aerith was calling, leaning over the bar to flag down the enegmatic gunman currently taking over for Tifa during Avalanche’s reunion party.

He’d been leaning on the counter near Red XIII and Barret, but looked just as happy to escape. It appeared the most avid environmentalists of the group had gotten into a deep discussion about the planet’s renewable resources again, and Cait Sith was busily watching them, no doubt recording their half-sober ideas for Reeve to parse later, when Reeve was done being as plastered as a wall, face-down on one of 7th Heaven’s tables.

Sephiroth would have left the conversation a long time ago, but Vincent’s threshold for boredom was far higher than the rest of Avalanche’s.

“Fresh glass of whiskey for Sephrioth, I think.” Aerith said, casting him a knowing glance.

“I see the darkness calls to you in times of joviality as well.” Vincent said dryly, tapping the broken glass with his eerie metal claw.

“What.” Sephrioth said, refusing to deign that with more of a response.

“I break glasses too.” Vinccent replied, flipping one of Tifa’s cups neatly in one hand before pouring the whiskey elegantly, and far too dramatically, over his shoulder and into the cup.

“You’re chatty tonight.” Aerith laughed, beaming and delighted.

“I’ve been scolded before for not being a sociable enough bartender.” Vincent said in answer, setting Sephiroth’s whiskey down before him. “On the rocks, top shelf.” He informed smoothly, his expression as flat and empty as if he was reciting the weather. “And don’t break this glass or I’ll tell Tifa.”

He wandered away once again, heading back to refill Barret’s glass. Sephiroth watched him go, then slowly let his eyes slide back over to Cloud. Cloud, who broke into a musical laugh as Yuffie whiffed her throw. Who bent over, a hand on his stomach, laughing as Sephiroth had never seen him laugh. He carefully set his glass down before he squeezed it too hard.

“You could go play.”

He hadn’t forgotten she was there. She was hard to ignore. But it still startled him to be addressed again. He glanced back to her.

/Her, her, her, kill her, kill her, she’ll ruin everything kill–/

“I beg your pardon?” He said, interrupting the intrusive, echoing memory of his mother.

“At darts,” Aerith said, lifting her eyebrows and glancing back to where the others were playing. “You could go play instead of sitting here pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“Oh? What are you doing?”

“I’m…” Pouting, he said internally. “Giving him space.”

“By staring fixedly at him across an empty bar,” Aerith said, nodding sagely. “Suuuuuper subtle, and very freeing.”

“Why are you here?” Sephiroth asked sharply rather than commenting on the insult.

“It’s an Avalanche party!” She said. “I’m Avalanche. And it’s my wife’s bar. You’re doing great, baby!”

This last she yelled to Tifa, who got so flustered that she landed her dart straight in the drywall behind the dartboard. Aerith just laughed and waved when Tifa glared over at her betrayal.

“That’s not what I meant.” Sephiroth said.

“No, I know.” She said with a sigh. “You’re just like Vincent. He always wants to know why I–” She lifted her jacket to cover her mouth with the lapel, brows furrowing as she lowered her voice in an imitation of the ex-Turk. “Choose to consort with the shadows though I am a creature of the sun.”

Sephiroth glanced over at Vincent, who surely must have heard. He met the man’s eyes, and received an eloquent shrug in response, before those burning red eyes turned back to Nanaki and Barret.

“So?” She asked when he didn’t reply. “Why don’t you go play with him?”

“Because I don’t want to let him go.” Sephiroth said, startled when the truth rose out of him in answer to this impossible woman’s questions. “And that frightens me. And him, I think.”

He wrapped his hands around his hair. Twisting his fingers into the silver strands. Not human, something in him was still chanting, even all these years later. Not human, not human, not human.

“Huh.” Aerith said softly.

Sephiroth glared over at her, ready for another barbed comment or confusing answer. But she was just looking at him. Smiling that sweet, sad smile she wore sometimes.

“…What?” He asked, more uneasy under that gentle gaze than under her teasing.

“I was just thinking.” She sighed, turning back to the bar and poking at the ice in her achingly-sweet-smelling beverage.

“Are you planning to enlighten me, or are you still imitating Vincent?”

Sephiroth asked, crossing his arms and staring evenly at her, willing to wait her out.

“I was thinking that Zack would be proud of you.” She said with a soft chuckle, that sad smile widening as a tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly, clearing her throat and glancing back to make sure no one had noticed.

Sephiroth had. The words were echoing through him, shaking him to the core.

“For being selfish?” He asked coldly. “Greedy? Possessive?”

“For recognizing it,” She argued, shaking her head, her braid swinging behind her. “For fighting it. For trying to protect Cloud. Don’t you think?”

Sephiroth was silent a moment, staring down into his whiskey. He tried not to think of the past too often but…

“Yes.” He said softly, nodding. “Yes.”

“I can keep you company,” she offered. “While you let him play.”

“You have many friends here whose company you could enjoy.”

“What if I want to enjoy yours?” She asked, smiling. “After all. For a while, you were my first love’s best friend. And with all the chaos, we never really got to know each other.”

“Hm.” Sephiroth hesitated. Felt the churning thing inside him swell then subside. He lifted his drink, slowly, and tilted it towards her.

“To Zack?” He offered.

She smiled at once. Sweet and bright and still so damn strange. Strange like him, just in the opposite direction. Maybe he could learn to be alright with that.

“To Zack.” She agreed, and clinked their glasses together.

_______

“You sort of kept to yourself tonight,” Cloud commented as they walked home together. “Did… You have some fun?”

Sephiroth looked up at the stars. It still felt rare and exciting to see them, after so much of his life lived under the smog of Midgar.

“I did.” He said after a moment. “Aerith and I got to talk. I… Enjoyed that.”

“She’s a weird one.” Cloud chuckled, shoving his hands a little deeper in his pockets.

“No argument.” Sephiroth said with a soft huff of laughter.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

“I just realized your hair’s not grabbing me.”

“You don’t like it.”

“I… Wouldn’t mind right now. If you wanted.”

Sephrioth released a touch of his control over the instinctual otherworldiness of his body, his flesh, his existence. He was not a human, and never would be. His hair coiled around Cloud’s arm like the tentacles of his monstrous mother.

“Thanks, by the way.” Cloud said softly after a long moment, pressing a little closer.

“Why are you thanking me?”

“I know you get… Uncomfortable. Around everyone. It meant a lot that you tried. And I’m really glad you and Aerith hung out. It means a lot that you want to know my friends.”

Not exactly the case but… Sephiroth accepted it. It had been nice. It had been a long time since he’d talked to someone who remembered Zack like he did. Soft and stupid and sweet.

“I’ll keep trying.” He said softly.

“Even though my friends are a bunch of absolute lunatics who cheat at darts?” Cloud chuckled, slipping one of his hands out of his pocket to twine his fingers through Sephiroth’s, holding onto his hand.

“What can I say?” Sephiroth said, squeezing Cloud’s hand gently, the roiling, worried thing inside him appeased again at last. “Takes one to know one.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and for the request!  
> Please donate to https://atlsolidarity.org/ if you can to support my local BLM movement!


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